Светлана Жарникова – Indo-Europeans cultural traditions (страница 4)

especially, Andronovo pottery. Moreover, in the Caucasus these motives most

likely have the same sacred functions of talisman and possibly of tribal and clan

totem as were characteristic of Andronovo and, likely, Tripolye cultures.

We encounter echoes of swastika motives in Scythian jewelry, more

specifically in the decor of horse trappings recovered from the Northern Pontine

area. A.Meliukova believes that the openwork swastika plaques, also to be

encountered in Thracian hoards are of Scythian origin, and adds that they appeared

in the Northern Pontine area in the late 6th century B.C. True, in Scythian art, all

these forms have been markedly modified and transmuted (Fig. 47) to meet

requirements of the conventionalized realistic trend known as the Scytho-Siberian

Animal Style.

We would now like to turn to the Vologda material. The appended table

furnishes specimens of the traditional ornamental motives of peasant embroideries

and ornamental weaving, common in the North-Eastern districts of Vologda

region. We noted earlier what the historical and ethnic situation in these parts was

like and we have no reason to question the Slav, or rather, East-Slav, Russian

origin of these ornamental patterns. All the samples supplied are details of

elaborate ornamental patterns that embellished headgear, sashes and belts, aprons,

shirts and blouses and towels, items mostly sacred that beside having a purely

domestic usage were talismans. One must say that the resemblance is amazing. As

in the entire range of the Andronovo decor, in North-Russian embroidery and

ornamental weaving, too the compositions are divided into three horizontal

15

registers with the often repetitive top and bottom two enclosing the central register

that as a rule displays the vital most designs from the angle of semantic

significance. This is precisely where we encounter a diversity of meandr and

swastika motifs (Fig. 51) which are absolutely identical with the Tripolye (Fig.

52) and Amlronovo (Figs. 33 and 34) decor as well as with the North Caucasian

and Trans-Caucasian motifs of the 13th-8th centuries B.C. and Scythian decor

\'7bFig. 41). Thus, if the ornament from the Babader vish site .(Fig. 29) embellished

the wall behind the altar in a 12th-8th centuries B.C. dwelling had an

unquestionably ritual significance the absolutely identical pattern, a composition

of lozenges, which adorns the hem of a North-Russian peasant woman's blouse, is

also of a ritual nature (Fig. 31).

The design on the pintadera from the same site has an affinity with the pattern

of a wedding towel (Fig. 61) and with the design on the stitched inset for a

Vologda towel (Fig. 59). Further, the detail from the ornamental pattern of an

Andronovo vessel (Fig. 18) is almost identical with that of the embroidered hem of

a blouse (Fig. 24), while the embroidered towel end (Fig. 5) is absolutely identical

with the intricate meander weave that embellishes an Andronovo clay vessel of the

middle of the 2nd millennium B.C. (Fig. 4) etc. etc. (see Figs. 19, 20, 22, 23, 25,

30 and 60). The existence of such affinities is likewise confirmed by east Slav

archaeological finds. Thus, the intricate swastika on the clasp or buckle of 1220-

1260 (discovered in the late 1960s at the Tikhvin digs in Novgorod (Fig. 36), is

identical with the motif that the Vologda peasant woman U.Terebova employed in

the 1910s for the wedding towel of her daughter (Fig. 37). Most exciting in this

respect is the slate spindle whorl, carrying a scratched design in the form of a six-

armed Orthodox cross enclosed within spiral meanders and swastikas that was

unearthed at a Slav farming site of the 11th-13th centuries near Ryazan and

published by G. Polyakova (Fig. 42).

The list could be greatly extended. However we shall merely state that while

with different nations similar ornamental patterns may converge, one is hard put to

believe that peoples thousands of kilometers and thousands of years apart could-if

16

they are not ethnogenetically linked-invent quite independendy of one another

such intricate ornamental patterns, which are identical down to the smallest detail

and which, furthermore, discharge the same ritual functions of talisman and totem.

Refraining from far-reaching conclusions, we shall merely note that as our

analysis is restricted to the steppes and forest-steppes of the USSR, we have not

invoked analogous Indian and Persian items, if we did so the appended table of

affinities would be much longer. It is our profound conviction, however that, such

material should be invoked as representing a most serious problem for the science

of history in the foreseeable future. The affinities to be observed in the spiritual

and material cultures of the ancient Slavs and, for instance, of the peoples of North

Western and Western Indian and Iran-both in olden times and partially today-are